Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/121

 glasses, filled and surrounded by squeezed orange and lemon rinds. The little two-burner gas plate atop a wooden dry goods box was covered with dirty dishes, frying pan, egg shells, bacon rinds, and a dominating though lopsided tea kettle. Even Alva’s trunk, which occupied half the entrance space between the alcove and the room, littered as it was with paper bags, cracker boxes and greasy paper plates, bore evidence of the orgy which the occupants of the room staged over every weekend.

Alva surveyed this rather intimate and familiar disorder, faltered a moment, started to call Braxton, then remembering previous Monday mornings set about his task alone. It was Braxton’s custom never to arise before noon. Alva who worked as a presser in a costume house was forced to get up at seven o’clock on every week day save Monday when he. was not required to report for work until twelve o’clock. His employers thus managed to accumulate several baskets of clothes from the sewing room before their pressers arrived. It was better to have them remain at home until this was done. Then you didn’t have to pay them so much, and having let the sewing room get head start, there was never any chance for the pressing room to slow down.

Alva’s mother had been an American mulatto, his father a Filipino. Alva himself was small in stature